Did Anyone Laugh When They Heard About the Space Shuttle Challenger Blowing Up?

How did they know Christa McAuliffe had dandruff?

[quote] solomon funeral like voice

Could his voice split a baby in half?

Her head and shoulders washed up on the shore!

[quote] People started saying all types of vile insensitive things and crude jokes

Did you go to St. Muriel's Datalounge Catholic School?

My class laughed and joked when our 6th grade science teacher had the radio on and said the twin towers fell down.

[quote] People started saying all types of vile insensitive things and crude jokes

The World Trade Center was an insatiable bottom.

What were her last words?

What does this button do?

No - I was a sophomore in high school also. Everyone was shocked and certainly didn't make jokes - just stunned and quiet.

Did you go to an all male high school? Cuz that sort of reaction is disgusting - and not typical.

Catholic school students are the worst.

I was in the library during a free period with a couple of friends. One of the AV guys wheeled in a TV that was showing footage of the explosion on the news. No one was laughing or making jokes. I was a sophomore in high school, as well.

BTW, OP, the word you were looking for was solemn.

0/10

I was in college at the time. That morning, my friend was driving be back to my apartment after class when we heard about it on the radio. I think neither of us really comprehended what we had just heard. When we got to my apartment, we turned the TV to CNN and just sat there watching the coverage, completely stunned. Neither of us laughed. Why would we?

You seem desperate for attention, OP.

I am desperate for attention but alas a true story that won't be believed.

You were an insensitive asshole OP.

Or...you were so stunned that you didn't know what to do or say so you laughed out of nervousness.

R15 is Sister.

OP here. With my classmates.

[quote] Well I was in high school sophomore year in religion class taught by Sister Rogan.

Sister Joe Rogan?

Q. What was the last thing to go through Christa McAuliffe's mind?

A. Ellison Onizuka's foot!

OP went to a special school for sociopaths.

HiLARious!

[quote] OP went to a special school for sociopaths.

They're called Catholics, R20.

Shameful

Some of us screamed.

Some of us smiled.

I remember it pretty clearly. I was in 8th grade. Someone rolled a TV in to our classroom on an AV cart. We were watching the launch, and then it exploded. Then....eerie silence. Our teacher was in shock.

We went to lunch right after we saw the footage. My friends at the table and I sat there, stunned. Some of us cried. It was so surreal and shocking, our brains were struggling to process what we had just seen. We kept questioning, were there really seven human beings on board? Is that a thing? Really? Seven people just exploded?

The build up had been so positive....the anticipation...and then, it all was over so suddenly. Really clearly remember the shock sensation.

And no, no one fucking laughed.

Space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas and Louisiana during reentry in 2003, killing all seven astronauts. Most people don't even remember this incident because America was so desensitized after 9/11, and the 2nd Iraq War was starting. Yet people still recall the space shuttle Challenger explosion which was over three decades ago.

A teacher friend told me this:

Christa McAuliffe lost the teacher of the year award because she blew up in front of her students.

Some high and mighty bitches on this thread.

I was very young at the time and was at gym class. The lesbian coach ended activity and brought in a television on a cart as well, and we watch stunned. For me, an asmathic nerdy gayling with glasses always chosen last for any team, it was a relief because I didn't have to play sports or do some sort of physical activity for one day. I was about the age of Prince George, and even then I knew I was different and people knew I was different.

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.

And then I laughed and laughed!

R30 No, Jerri, you laughed really hard.

I remember it, R26. I live in Texas and I remember hearing the BOOM that Saturday morning about 8:00. My husband and I were still in bed and we thought is was maybe the sound of a car wreck close by. We weren't aware of what happened with the shuttle until later that day when we saw reports of it on TV. Then we realized that was the BOOM we heard earlier.

I worked in labs at the main UC Medical Center in San Francisco and out at the VA Hospital across town. There was a van that went back and forth from the two sites all day. When I entered the lab at the VA, everyone looked stunned and dazed. Someone said "the shuttle blew up!". I said, "Oh, wow, I was just on it!"

Q: What color were Christa McAuliffe's eyes?

A: Blue. One blew left and one blew right.

yeah, like 3rd comment r34.

R34 One generation's tragedy is another generation's punchline.

Not me, it was Reagan's fault.

They all laughed at Christopher Columbus.

There was so much hype - the “teacher in space” contest and huge build up beforehand. And the fact that the Shuttle made space travel seem as mundane and easy as jet travel. And the fact that thousands of school kids were watching it all happen live. That day was just awful and literally stunning. I was in college - the jokes only started a few days after. A professor of mine was actually on headset at JPL and heard them all screaming as they fell, which wasn’t made public until years later.

No, OP, because I'm not psychotic.

I was in 8th grade. Nobody làughed, one friend complained th next day thàt the news dominated TV that night, but our teacher put her in her plàce real quick.

They did joke about AIDS a lot and Rock Hudson. Kids can be very cruel, adults I expect more from.

I was 15. It was like 9/11. We were shocked and traumatized. Everyone wanted to watch news feeds but the teachers wouldn't allow it. We had to wait until we were home from school to watch the news.

When you've got a school filled with Kavanaughs there are going to be a lot of yucks at every tragedy.

I’d entirely forgotten about the 2003 incident and still only recall it vaguely. Weird how a thing like that can just fade away from public memory.

I remember being low-level pissed off all day since none of my teachers allowed it to be broadcast in class and we wouldn’t get to be a part of history, so to speak. I heard what happened after I got home and was quite surprised. Although I wasn’t sad about it, I wondered later to myself if it weren’t actually a blessing that we didn’t witness it.

No, op. Most people weren’t insane psychopaths.

R32

Wow! Are you in East Texas? I’m shocked you heard that - how chilling.

I was walking into a ballet class at UT Austin when someone entered with the news. I didn’t think much because she was so nonchalant that I assumed it blew up before liftoff and that everyone was OK. It was a huge deal in Texas because of JSC. Anyway, no - I didn’t laugh when I realized what actually happened.

R47, I'm in DFW. Our house at the time backed up to a main road, so we were used to hearing loud heavy rumbling from trucks and such. That was our first thought. But it sounded more like an impact than a rumble. It even caused our windows to rattle slightly. That's why we thought it was maybe a wreck.

I'm not saying this in any sort of way that makes fun of "eldergays" - I am pushing 50 myself - but I am genuinely surprised to see so many people who were clearly already adults when it happened posting on this thread. Guess I always forget how truly wide the age range of DL posters can be.

I was a junior in high school and I remember my best friend and I were home watching the launch. It was a snow day for our area.

R26 declares that she knows not only that most people don't remember the Columbia disaster, but why they don't.

R26 must be a god.

I was watching it live. No one laughter. Kind of gut wrenching.

I was watching it live in my college apartment. For a little bit we weren't sure what what happening- couldn't tell if it was just a booster dropping off or something terrible. Turned out to be terrible.

R51 there are engineering seminars on online about the incident and NASA officials from the early 2000s space shuttle program generally agree that Columbia is generally forgotten for those reasons.

R26--in the early 2000s, maybe 2001, I was at an isolated eco hotel in the mountains in Belize. I came out of the little restaurant and was walking the path back to my cabin in the early evening alone, and in the sky was this huge ball of fire coming toward me. It seemed really low in the sky and passed by heading northish. As it was most directly overhead whatever the fuck it was was completely indistinguishable in the ball of flames, no shape or visible outline of the aircraft was distinguishable. Soon after it flew out of sight there was a huge sonic BOOM and I waited a while to see if I noticed anything after that but all was quiet. Other people were staying at the lodge but no one else was about, neither guests nor employees. It felt like a UFO joke and I was Cousin Weenie who saw the weird thing while fishing in the swamp.

In the morning I asked a guy at the restaurant if he'd heard the boom and told him what I'd seen. He told me it was on the news that a space shuttle had passed by coming back into the Earth's atmosphere. I have no idea if that ball of fire approach is typical, because of course I have never seen it before or since. If that's just what happens, there must be some mad fire retardants used to build the shuttles. Or maybe I saw the one that blew up later?

The bus OP rode to school.

With Columbia, my sister lived under the flight path for reentry - about 50 miles inland from the Cape. After my dad retired from the military he went to work on the space program so we always had an interest since we were young. Plus my sister worked for Martin for decades which ended up merging into Lockheed. I never knew this before but she told me she always listened for the shuttle landings which would be I think she said 3 loud booms. She later told me that when she didn't hear them as expected she knew something was wrong. I'm just now realizing that this was only 2 month before she died.

I would never have the guts to go into space. I remember when the Challenger exploded I was visiting my parents in the suburbs and I went into my dad's office to say how terrible it was and how sad. I thought maybe I was comforting him. He just said, "well, honey, you have to expect to lose a payload now and then." Yikes was all I could think but then I hadn't flown bombers that regularly got shot out of the sky during a war. Lose 30 planes on a bombing mission and you lose 300 men. I don't know if that's stoicism or professionalism or sociopathy. But life has to go on. I guess.

OP, you and your classmates are fucking vile sociopaths. WTF is wrong with you?

Fortunately, I didn't know any sociopaths then, so no.

Reading this gave me a flashback to what would've happened if I'd still been in Catholic school when this happened. All the fuckhead males around me would've started laughing. Some of the girls would've been quiet, then they would've starting laughing as well. I would've been silent, having been taught, after the assassinations of the 1960s, about the solemnity of an event like this.

I would've remained silent. And got beat up for it the rest of the day. Fuck Catholic school. Fuck those subhuman cunts.

My class did that with school shootings. Laughing and making jokes. I feel like that's a normal response to witnessing something horrible, your brain tries to deal with it or soften the blow.

Need Another Seven (make that fourteen) Astronauts

Need

Another

Seven (make that fourteen)

Astronauts

Eat shit R58.

It’s ancient history and we’ve all moved on.

R64 The OP asked about the reaction to the disaster at the time it happened. Nobody laughed when Kennedy was assassinated, so it's sad to know that over 20 years later there was such a callous reaction to people losing their lives. I'll never forget the look on Christa McAuliffe's parents' faces.

N0, we did not laugh. However, my class was studying the Holocaust at the time, so it could not compete for generating chuckles.

I saw it at my college apartment. I remember that my group of friends and I had an ironic distance to it--I think there must have been media overkill in the aftermath, and we were (stupid) edgy Gen Xers.

R60, so are all Catholics in Catholic School sociopaths?!? WTF? Laughing at the holocaust? Laughing at the Challenger explosions?

WTF is wrong with you people?

R64, it wasn't "ancient history" AT THE TIME IT WAS HAPPENING, you dip shit.

Then quit acting like it’s breaking news, asshole R69.

I would've if I could've.

I did. I've felt bad about it for years.

[quote]A professor of mine was actually on headset at JPL and heard them all screaming as they fell, which wasn’t made public until years later.

The shuttle lost radio contact just a few seconds after the explosion.

I was in 4th grade and IIRC nobody in my school watched it live. I remember my teacher told us about it just before school was dismissed for the day and of course as soon as I got home I watched all the coverage on the news.

We had followed the news about Christa McAuliffe in the classroom for months, so it was odd we didn't get to watch it live.

I was stuck in a rental house in Key West all day with a friend who would not stop bitching because his ABC soaps were preempted. And another friend who kept making vanilla swiss almond coffee all day. It was a nightmare. A nightmare, I say.

This is the transcript from after the event:

T+1:15 (M) What happened? What happened? Oh God, no – no!

T+1:17 (F) Oh dear God.

T+1:18 (M) Turn on your air pack! Turn on your air…

T+1:20 (M) Can’t breathe… choking…

T+1:21 (M) Lift up your visor!

T+1:22 (M/F) (Screams.) It’s hot. (Sobs.) I can’t. Don’t tell me… God! Do it…now…

T+1:24 (M) I told them… I told them… Dammit! Resnik don’t…

T+1:27 (M) Take it easy! Move (unintelligible)…

T+1:28 (F) Don’t let me die like this. Not now. Not here…

T+1:31 (M) Your arm… no… I (extended garble, static)

T+1:36 (F) I’m… passing… out…

T+1:37 (M) We’re not dead yet.

T+1:40 (M) If you ever wanted (unintelligible) me a miracle… (unintelligible)… (screams)

T+1:41 (M) She’s… she’s… (garble) … damn!

T+1:50 (M) Can’t breathe…

T+1:51 (M/F) (screams) Jesus Christ! No!

T+1:54 (M) She’s out.

T+1:55 (M) Lucky… (unintelligible).

T+1:56 (M) God. The water… we’re dead! (screams)

T+2:00 (F) Goodbye (sobs)… I love you, I love you…

T+2:03 (M) Loosen up… loosen up…

T+2:07 (M) It’ll just be like a ditch landing…

T+2:09 (M) That’s right, think positive.

T+2:11 (M) Ditch procedure…

T+2:14 (M) No way!

T+2:17 (M) Give me your hand…

T+2:19 (M) You awake in there? I… I…

T+2:29 (M) Our Father… (unintelligible)…

T+2:42 (M) …hallowed be Thy name… (unintelligible).

T+2:57 (M) You…over there?

T+2:58 (M) The Lord is my shepherd, I shall… not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures… though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil… I will dwell in the house…

T+3:15 to end. None. Static, silence.

I thought that transcript was fake.

Wikipedia doesn't mention any transcript or other proof that anyone was conscious after the explosion.

Snopes says that "transcript" is fake.

My professor isn't a liar.

Wait...what? What is the deal with the "transcript"? Is it fake or not? Creepy either way...

Completely fake transcript, although as others have noted at least one of the astronauts had activated an emergency oxygen supply and was probably conscious when the crew compartment hit the water.

[quote]Did Anyone Laugh When They Heard About the Space Shuttle Challenger Blowing Up?

Yes, a friend of mine was in a store on Bleecker and she said she laughed when she heard - which was awful because she was in a public place.

I have a transcript from my classroom that day. I just need to find it.

I thought they were all killed instantly by the explosion. You mean they weren't? Decades later and it makes me sad all over again.

No, they survived the explosion and were alive all the way down to the water. I cannot even imagine.